In the 1800s, the great arctic explorer, Fridtjof Nansen, wrote, ‘the polar bear is an intelligent and crafty animal, but it is cursed with intense curiosity.’ This year, it is cabin owners near Churchill that are feeling the effects of this curse.
I am one of these cabin owners, residing at the appropriately named Camp Nanuq (Nanuq is Inuktitut for polar bear). About 20km (15 miles) east of Churchill, it is a quaint ‘cottage subdivision’, although I must say that we use that term loosely up here. Tending more towards a collection of ramshackle buildings and ‘bear proofed’ cabins, you could liken it to a shanty town Fort Knox.
Anyway, there is a bear out there right now and he is a bad bear. Despite our Fort Knox leanings, he is quite adept at breaking into (or simply just breaking) cabins.
Luckily, one of the co-inhabitants of my rustic little cabin is a half wolf, half husky named Milo. Now, Milo is very large and very friendly but hates polar bears with a passion. He even barks and growls at them on TV. (The other day he challenged the rock in front of the Churchill Hotel – it is painted like a polar bear…).
So, when Milo starts barking at 2am, things get exciting very quickly. I usually keep a pair of rubber boots and a shotgun beside the bed, for moments just such as this.
In a flash, I was out the door and into the truck. Of course, I was still in my pyjamas but now accompanied by green rubber boots and a 12-gauge shotgun (mind you, I have had bear encounters at the cabin wearing a lot less than this…).
Now, chasing polar bears is truly one of the great man-dog bonding moments. Provided the ‘man’ is in a truck, of course. We caught up to him three cabins away, actually in the midst of popping off one of the nail-board shutters on that cabin.
Milo loves this moment. Hackles raised, he barks and harasses the offending bear. As backup, I honk the horn and we ‘encourage’ the bear not to associate cabins with food or fun. This night, it ended with the bear swimming away and us firing a few explosive shells over its head. That was that.
Or so we thought. Since then, he has not returned to my cabin (knock on wood) but has systematically ransacked more than twelve cabins throughout Camp Nanuq and the neighbouring ‘subdivision’ at Spruce Ridge.
Now, Churchill has its own Polar Bear Alert program, they have handled over 1,000 polar bears over the course of the program and they do a very effective job of keeping the town safe.
Officers from the Province of Manitoba Conservation Department patrol various zones around Churchill, including ‘Zone Two’. This zone begins just east of the townsite and extends to the ‘dump’, but also includes various remote cabin areas. About 80% of the bears are ‘handled’ in Zone Two.
So, conservation officers came out and set a polar bear trap – a large culvert designed to trap a bear inside and safely transport it back to D-20, the polar bear detention building. Here, bears are kept isolated until they can be relocated or the Bay freezes up. They are given only water, ensuring that this experience is not associated with a ‘reward’.
But, that night, the bear simply pushed the trap around a bit before moving on to more cabins. It seems he may have seen one of these before…
The next afternoon, I spotted him heading inland, across a different tundra pond this time. Conservation brought out their helicopter. From the helicopter, a Conservation officer can fire a tranquilizer dart, loaded with Telazol, into the bear’s shoulder. This temporarily immobilizes the bear without significant side effects, the drug almost undetectable after 1-2 days.
With the tranquilizer dart loaded, they scoured the countryside, but again to no avail. Often, bears cut and run when a helicopter flies too close but there was no sign of this one, probably hunkered down in the willows, waiting out the commotion.
It seems he may have encountered a helicopter before as well.
So, that’s where we stand. The wind has picked up, gusting up to 80 km/hr (50 mph),and he has taken shelter somewhere. This reprieve may only last a day or two, or may be he will just to go away, its hard to tell with bears.
In the mean time, diligent conservation officers patrol Camp Nanuq and Spruce Ridge on day and night patrols and when they leave the bear comes back and breaks into another cabin. The trap remains and the helicopter stands ready.
Cabin owners lay down their nail boards (3/4” plywood with many, many spikes driven through them), shutter their windows and perform a daily check on their homes and repair any damage.
The overwhelming majority of polar bears co-exist well with humans up here. They do their thing and we do ours. But every once in a while, a bear comes along that may be a little too ‘intelligent and crafty’ for his own (and our) good. When and if Polar Bear Alert officers catch this bear, his ‘intense curiosity’ should land him a long time in D20, the ‘polar bear jail’. But, just in case, I’ll still keep my rubber boots and wolf dog, ready.
This article was followed by a sequel… ‘Born To Be Worse’ in which me, my rubber boots and dog were nowhere near the cabin when a bear came by. While it did manage to first undo all of our bear defences and then proceeded to ‘unrenovate’ our kitchen, it still could have been worse. About a month ago we discovered that the bear paw print that we had always thought was on the outside of our bedroom window was actually on the inside!
